Research into information-seeking behaviour in a variety of contexts has shown that users typically formulate queries in an unstructured way, relying on “knowing what I want when I see it”. Although not the full explanation, much of this behaviour derives from simply not knowing what there is available to be discovered.
It is often the case that a user has a piece of information and would like to find out more about it. The user does not know what he wants to know, or the scope of the information that might be available. He wants to know what facts are available and to have the results of his inquiry arranged in a way that enhances his understanding of the subject.
Information retrieval is one method of allowing users to gain access to information. However, for a user, the task of traversing information (e.g. on the Internet, on relational databases etc.) and finding relevant information amongst the vast amount that exists can be very difficult and time-consuming. There are numerous information retrieval techniques and tools available currently. One example is a “robot”, which is a type of “agent”. An agent is a computer program that is goal-oriented, that is, an agent tries to achieve some end result. Another example is a “search engine”, which searches through an index of information in order to locate a particular piece of that information by keyword for example. There are two main categories of searching, namely, unfocussed and focussed. Unfocussed searching occurs when a robot or a search engine is not looking for anything in particular and its main aim is to gather as much information as possible. Focussed searching occurs when the robot or search engine is looking for a particular piece of information. This technique is used by a specialised robot, such as, a shopping robot.
Current search technology has several disadvantages. For example, when using an unfocussed searching technique in response to a query, it is more than likely that several unrelated topics of information will be found (as well as related topics). Once the results from the search are returned, the user then has to spend time trawling through the results in order to find the “hits” that are relevant to the query. Additionally, in order to filter the results, a user needs specialized knowledge of the search tool in question. Furthermore, when focussed searching is used a user does need to know what they want before they see it. Yet another disadvantage is that search technology is not integrated well with standard applications.